As Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, speaks to reporters, on the floor of the House of Representatives on April 10, 2024, Democratic lawmakers look on and chastise him. Among them were Rep. Analise Ortiz (dressed in red) and Rep. Oscar De Los Santos (wearing a green tie); the House Ethics Committee on June 4, 2024, reported that the pair violated House rules for their actions on the floor that day. Photo by Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Arizona Mirror
Two Democratic Arizona state representatives engaged in disorderly conduct when they shouted at their colleagues across the aisle as those Republicans stalled a vote to repeal a 160-year-old abortion ban, the House Ethics Committee found.
The committee released its reports on June 4, finding unanimously that Reps. Oscar De Los Santos, of Laveen, and Analise Ortiz, of Phoenix, violated House rules on April 10 when they yelled “Shame!,” “Hold the vote!” and “Blood on your hands!” while pointing at Republican lawmakers across the chamber.
The committee found that De Los Santos, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, violated the chamber’s “rules on debate” and that both he and Ortiz engaged in disorderly behavior by yelling at members of the House with “inappropriate and insulting language to impugn (their) character.”
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De Los Santos and Ortiz were both found by the committee to have violated the House’s Rule 1 — damaging the institutional integrity of the chamber. It also concluded that De Los Santos violated Rule 18, on decorum and debate, and Rule 19, on impermissible debate, for beginning to shout before the House had recessed and without being recognized by the chairman, and for “using language personally offensive to members of the House.”
Both lawmakers were also accused of undermining “the dignity and integrity of the House of Representatives and ‘embarrass(ing)’ the institution on a national level.”
The committee referred its reports on both lawmakers to the House of Representatives to determine if they should be disciplined — and, if so, how.
Because expulsion requires a two-thirds vote of the chamber, and Republicans only have a one-vote majority, there’s no chance that either representative will be expelled. But they could be formally censured, which requires only a majority vote.
In a joint statement sent to the Arizona Mirror, De Los Santos and Ortiz said they were speaking on behalf of their constituents when they yelled as Republicans delayed the vote to uphold the near-total abortion ban.
“This entire process is nothing more than another Republican attempt to suppress speech that they disagree with,” Ortiz and De Los Santos wrote. “They consistently abuse their power to silence dissent.”
Republican Reps. Barbara Parker and Jacqueline Parker, both of Mesa, and David Marshall, of Snowflake, brought the complaints against De Los Santos and Ortiz on April 24, the same day that the House ultimately voted to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.
During a May 15 Ethics Committee hearing regarding the complaint, Barbara Parker accused the representatives of inciting a “riot” and causing her and other lawmakers to fear for their safety.
The two Democratic lawmakers began shouting and pointing at Republicans on the House floor while walking toward them on April 10 after the GOP majority decided to delay voting on whether to strike down a near-total abortion ban that originated in 1864. A day earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court had ruled that the law, passed before statehood, trumped a 2022 abortion restriction and was enforceable.
After shouting at the Republicans as they left the chamber, De Los Santos and Ortiz then interrupted an impromptu press gaggle gathered around Rep. Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican who had unsuccessfully made the first attempt to repeal the law. The two accused Gress of not caring whether women died and called him a liar because he has previously sponsored fetal personhood laws.
Both lawmakers submitted written responses to the complaints against them on May 1, in which the attorney representing them, Jim Barton, asked the committee to “protect the spirit of debate and the marketplace of ideas on the floor of the Arizona Legislature” by not interpreting “the rules of decorum and civility as barring passionate debate.”
He also accused the representatives who filed the complaint of using hyperbole by saying that Ortiz and De Los Santos attempted to incite a riot when they did nothing to physically threaten any of their colleagues.
Both lawmakers declined to attend the May 15 hearing, sending Barton to answer the committee’s question in their stead.
Barton wrote in the responses that the representatives’ actions were fueled by their beliefs that Republicans were delaying “the People’s business” on April 10.
But the committee ultimately decided that the lawmakers’ actions went beyond “passionate debate.”
The Ethics Committee found that disregarding “House rules presents a real and legitimate chilling effect on the dialogue between elected officials on important matters of statewide policy and denigrates the House as an institution of government. The rules allow members to express their ideas knowing that doing so would be met, at worst, with orderly opposition.”
The committee went on to say that it cannot allow “violations of the rules of decorum and order to be characterized as anything other than disorderly behavior. Doing so would not only render the rules meaningless; it would set an improper and damaging precedent for this body as an institution.”
The committee noted in its report that neither Ortiz nor De Los Santos disputed the facts of the complaint, conceding in their written responses that their actions were “loud” and “formally out of order.”
In their statement to the Mirror, Ortiz and De Los Santos said that the House Republicans again on June 4 tried to quash dissent “when they closed the gallery to the public and voted to send an unconstitutional, anti-immigrant and discriminatory ballot measure to voters,” referring the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 2060.
They also pointed out that the Ethics Committee recently dismissed a complaint from Democrats against Republican Rep. Austin Smith, of Wittman, who is accused of forging candidate petition signatures — which is a crime — when they are only accused of defying House rules.
“We are focused on the people’s work — on finding real solutions to serious issues — not these petty political games,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.
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